Basic reading skills need to be acquired early in a target language to allow students to make full use of educational opportunities provided in all their subjects. Grades 1 to 3 is a critical time as those reading below the grade 4 level, internationally, are classified as non-readers, with grade 1 being a crucial link. Phonetic skills are an important component of reading skills.

In Jamaica, from grade 1 up, patterns of the Standard Jamaican English (SJE) sound system are taught in classes with a view to helping children become conscious of the different shapes of sounds. The aim of this article is to examine one of those patterns: the pronunciation of (-t, -d) consonants in word-final consonant clusters in words such as must, went, accident, cold, left. Twenty-four children-seven years of age and one teacher were studied.

The idea of using literature in the English language classroom is certainly not a novel one. Indeed, as early as the nineteenth century, English literature was taught in Europe mainly for the purpose of teaching English language skills, by placing emphasis on the ways in which writers expressed their ideas and articulated their thoughts (Milner and Milner 2003). This was because the teaching of literature, which was mainly done in Greek and Latin, focused on grammar analyses, rhetoric and, to a lesser extent, philosophy (Rosenblatt 1991).

In this paper the 'subjective consciousness' of 'Bettina' (who begins from a place of self-conscious obedience to the edict that teachers should always 'speak proper English' and battles cognitive dissonance as she attempts to use the students' home language, Jamaican Creole as the medium of instruction) is interwoven with the subjective consciousness of students participating in her JC/SJE bilingual project. This dialogue of perspectives exposes some of the complexities of the classroom as sociolinguistic and emotional psychological space.

The introduction of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), which has taken the place of the A-level examinations set by and for British institutions, was a logical step in the process of decolonization of educational practices in the officially English-speaking Caribbean. It also offered an opportunity to base curricular and examination practices in local realities. The CAPE syllabus for “Communication Studies'' very clearly aims to do so.

The current study explores the racial and linguistic self-concept of 138 children between the ages of 5 and 10 years, enrolled in a poor, urban, Jamaican government school. In Jamaica, studies into the racial self-concept of adults have been conducted since as early as 1952 (Kerr); however no study into the development of racial and linguistic self-concept in Jamaican children has yet been documented.

The Jamaican linguistic map is a very complex one. Many scholars who have contributed to our understanding of this map present it as a continuum linking two extremes: Standard Jamaican English (SJE) and Jamaican Creole (JC). Between these two extremes, many Jamaican speakers produce variations which lean in either direction, depending on their level of socialization. Unfortunately, the writings of the scholars are often too technical, inaccessible and of little use to the average Jamai can.

Although the official language of Trinidad is English, the vast majority of the population speaks Trinidadian English Creole (TEC) as a first or sole language. Varieties of international standard English, standard Trinidadian English, and TEC, overlap in areas of lexicon, phonology and grammar, but TEC has a basically different grammatical system not always recognized as distinct because of superficial formal similarities (Carrington [7], Solomon [27], Winford [30]).

That school children should be seen and not heard seems a commonly held view among school administrators and researchers. This paper reports on children's views of various aspects of school organisation and administration and their suggestions for change within schools. The views expressed by these children indicate that administrators are failing to avail themselves of a valuable asset in problem-solving in school administration and organisation. The paper also discusses the implications of the children's views for school administration.

One of the outgrowths of the human capital revolution of the early 1960s (see Bowman [13], Schultz [40] and Becker [4]) was the vocation aliasing of curricula. From the standpoint of the third world, this seemed a timely development in that many of the emerging post-colonial societies had inherited education systems which, according to Eric Williams [48], "showed an almost total absence of any approximation to the technical and vocational” (p. 250).